Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them.
Douglass contrasts the celebratory noise of the Fourth of July with the amplified suffering of enslaved people, whose chains feel heavier amidst the national joy.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.